REWORK…

A recent thread on the OakTable mailing list about company policies got me a little fired up. In reply to my extended rant Cary Millsap suggested I read REWORK.

Let me start by saying I’m not a fan of self-help books and I don’t consider myself a business person, so a book that looks like self-help for businesses just didn’t seem like a good fit. I have little-to-no ambition in terms of the business world or money. Having said that, I play in a world where ambition and money are central, so I figured I’d give it a go.

REWORK distills and debunks many of the myths associated with modern business. For anyone who has worked in the IT industry for a few years, the central messages are not new. You will have thought about a lot of these issues many times, probably while you were in a 3 hour meeting to discuss why you missed a deadline…

I guess I’m in agreement with about 95% of the suggestions in the book and even those I disagree with, I can see the point. If you are running a business, want to run a business, or just trying to understand why the company you work for is so messed up, you should read this book. It’s a bit like group therapy. It’s good to know you are not alone…

Big thanks to Cary for the suggestion. I have a couple of mates (who still have some ambition left) who will benefit from it more than me. I’ll be sure to pass it on.

Well it’s tempting, but one reads so much about how businesses ought to be run, and so much of it makes so much sense (fewer meetings, quiet working conditions, less bureaucracy etc) that when you are neck-deep in some hypothetical corporate behemoth that does absolutely everything completely wrong it is rather depressing to have these things pointed out to you.

I read this too (via Cary’s recommendation of the work of @dhh and @jasonfried) just a week or two ago, and loved it.

I’m similarly not a business person and no fan of self-help books. For me, it just spelt out that it doesn’t *have* to be the complete shambles that a lot of companies manage to make it, that there are other ways. So whereas it’s given David Aldridge despair, it gives me hope, glass is half-full I guess

I’m presuming the mailing list is a private one, I’d be interested to see your rant though if you felt like sharing

Robin: The rant in question included references to incidents that should remain private. Sorry. If I saw you at a conference I would tell you to your face, then deny everything if it was ever in print.